Microsoft hopes 7 will be its lucky number as it sidesteps convention for the Vista follow-up by adopting its codename and version number as the real deal.
Windows 2010? Nope. Vista 2.0? Nah. After plenty of speculation, Windows 7 now has a
real name. It’s ‘Windows 7’.
The decision was announced overnight by Microsoft, ahead of the public debut of the OS at this month’s PDC and WinHEC conferences where a milestone build will be distributed to attendees (APC will be among them, so tune in for our first hands-on look at the next-gen Windows).
It’s also telling of Microsoft’s new approach to dealing with its community that this major decision was announced not through a press release or at a developer conference of the Kool-Aid crowd but through a Microsoft blog – specifically the Windows Vista team blog.
“While I know there have been a few cases at Microsoft when the codename of a product was used for the final release, I am pretty sure that this is a first for Windows” said Mike Nash, Corporate VP for Windows Product Management, on the blog.
“The decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity” Nash explains. “Over the years, we have taken different approaches to naming Windows. We've used version numbers like Windows 3.11, or dates like Windows 98, or “aspirational” monikers like Windows XP or Windows Vista. And since we do not ship new versions of Windows every year, using a date did not make sense. Likewise, coming up with an all-new “aspirational” name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Windows Vista into the next generation of Windows.”
“Simply put”, Nash says, “this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore “Windows 7” just makes sense.”
The derivation of the 7 comes from this being the seventh major release of the Windows OS built on the NT kernel, which itself debuted as Windows NT 3.1 (in order to syc up to the version number of the then-current Windows 3.1). Then we had Windows NT 4.0, followed by Windows 2000 which was officially Windows 5.0. Microsoft has opted not to count the consumer 9x family of Windows because it was never built on the NT’s foundation.
But Windows XP was, which is why it identifies itself as version 5.1. Vista (and Windows Server 2008) made the leap to being Windows 6.0. So now we’re at the seventh generation of Windows, at least in the sense of the NT kernel.
Windows 7. Yes, it’s undeniably catchy. Now we just have to see how the OS itself shapes up...